Dancing lasers levitate carbon nanotubes

I dont understand the full implications of this technology but it sounded interesting anyways.

For the first time, carbon nanotubes have been picked up and moved with a laser beam. The trick may finally offer engineers who want to build microchips based on nanotube components a way to move the diminutive devices into place.

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A small step forward is all it is, even though it will allow breakthrough Chip Speeds its just another tool in the Nanotechnologists toolbelt. Might be usefull in building a Drexlerian Nanobot, but we are still far awar from that i think

I don't think they levitate the nano tubes, they just move it. Laser light can push things away but not grab them and pull them. The only way a beam could pull something is because of weak electrostatics and low beam power.

Originally posted by XL5
I don't think they levitate the nano tubes, they just move it. Laser light can push things away but not grab them and pull them. The only way a beam could pull something is because of weak electrostatics and low beam power.

I do agree that it would be impossible to do it with one laser. They probably use multiple laser to do this. BTW This isn't a new discovery, I remember hearing them working on this stuff back in 2002. Not a major discovery but an immensly usfull one IMHO.

Originally posted by XL5
I don't think they levitate the nano tubes, they just move it. Laser light can push things away but not grab them and pull them. The only way a beam could pull something is because of weak electrostatics and low beam power.

According to the article" The researchers overcame this by using a liquid crystal "beam splitter" to divide their laser beam into 200 individually controllable beams that allowed them to make triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons from bundles of nanotubes on the surface of a microscope slide. "